Space /spﾄ《/ (noun) a continuous area or expanse that is free, available, or unoccupied which all things exist and move.
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CONTENTS/
Introduction
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Mind Space (photo story)
Physical Space (photo story)
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Symbolism of the Color White
Contemplating the Void: Interventions of the Guggenheim Museum
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The Glass Pavillion by Steve Hermann
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Negative Space
Space: The Undefinable Space of Architecture By Erdem Üngür
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Insights from Kyoto, Japan: The Potential of Nothing By Gunter Nitschke
“Is My White Your White?” Conversation with Muge Erol
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EDITORS NOTE/
White space fascinates me. Maybe its because I am a sucker for minimalism, or maybe because I never know how to utilize it. “It� not only being the white of a canvas, or the white of a digital document, but the space that is found within our own mental void. Space is defined as a continuous area or expanse that is free, available, or unoccupied which all things exist and move. This space can be approached in many different ways, which wil be explored in this publication. My goal for this publication is to bring beauty to whiteness; to showcase the beauty in plain space on a page; and to bring beauty to subtlety. By approaching the physical and mental aspects of white space, I aim to target the idea behind blank spaces to be less frightening, but rather, a breath of fresh air. Or hopefully something like that. Love, K8T
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Welcome to the world of WHITE. or SPACE. I don’t know either.
/11 White is an achromatic color, literally a “color without color�, composed of a mixture of all frequencies of the light of the visible spectrum. It is one of the most common colors in nature, the color of sunlight, snow, milk, chalk, limestone and other common minerals. In many cultures white represents or signifies purity, innocence, and light, and is the symbolic opposite of black, or darkness. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, white is the color most often associated with perfection, the good, honesty, cleanliness, the beginning of something, the new, neutrality, and exactitude. White is an important color for almost all world religions. The Pope, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, has worn white since 1566, as a symbol of purity and sacrifice. In Islam, and in the Shinto religion of Japan, it is worn by pilgrims; and by the Brahmins in India, In Western cultures and in Japan, white is the most common color for wedding dresses, symbolizing purity and virginity. In Asian cultures, white is also the colour of mourning. In nature, snow and clouds appear white because they are composed of water droplets or ice crystals
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mixed with air; when white sunlight enters snow, very little of the spectrum is absorbed; almost all of the light is reflected or scattered by the air and water molecules, so the snow appears to be the color of sunlight, white. Beaches with sand containing high amounts of quartz or eroded limestone also appear white, since quartz and limestone reflect or scatter sunlight, rather than absorbing it. In page layout, illustration and sculpture, white space is often referred to as negative space. It is the portion of a page left unmarked: margins, gutters, and space between columns, lines of type, graphics, figures, or objects drawn or depicted. White space should not be considered merely ‘blank’ space — it is an important element of design which enables the objects in it to exist at all; the balance between positive (or non-white) and the use of negative spaces is key to aesthetic composition. Inexpert use of white space, however, can make a page appear incomplete.When space is at a premium, such as in some types of magazine, newspaper, and yellow pages advertising, white space is limited in order
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/15 to get as much vital information on to the page as possible. A page crammed full of text or graphics with very little white space runs the risk of appearing busy or cluttered, and is typically difficult to read. Conversely, judicious use of white space can give a page a classic, elegant, or rich appearance. For example, upscale brands often use ad layouts with little text and a lot of white space. For publication designers, white space is very important. Publications can be printed on a variety of different papers, which can have different colours, textures, etc. In these cases, white space is used for good presentation and for showcasing the different stocks. White is: The achromatic color of maximum lightness; the color of objects that reflect nearly all light of all visible wavelengths; the complement or antagonist of black, the other extreme of the neutral gray series. Although typically a response to maximum stimulation of the retina, the perception of white appears always to depend on contrast.
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physical space
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A photo story exploring the possibilities of white within physical spaces. Departing from the idea of pure accidental and venturing into the world of white architecture portrayed as beautiful.
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Contemplate The Void
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Contemplating The Void: Interventions of the GUGGENHEIM MUSEUM in New York, New York. The Guggenheim Museum’s rotunda flaunts the fear of emptiness. The artists in Contemplating the Void imbue it with unforgettable presence.
30 Frank Lloyd Wright, who likened his design for the Guggenheim Museum to a teacup and saucer or an upside-down ziggurat from ancient Middle-Eastern architecture, would delight in the current exhibition in his spiralling galleries. Freshly painted in a luminous white, they are completely empty for the first time since the museum’s founding in 1959. People are flocking to experience the pristine architecture itself, along with the complex design of the massive skylight overhead and the central well of the rotunda. This novel experience of open space complements a brilliant exhibition in a side gallery called Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum, for which artists, architects and designers were invited to imagine fanciful schemes that address the museum’s core vacuum. With 193 entries, mostly works on paper, collages and digital prints pinned to the walls or laid out in showcases, the show is a feast of innovative responses expressing cultural overtones and social engagement. Immediately striking is the amount of red that participants have splashed across their clean renderings of the inner spiral. Anish Kapoor leads the pack (Royal Academy redux) with Ascension (Red),
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32 a plume of red smoke shot up from the rotunda floor that escapes through the skylight in a series of three digital prints. Studio Arne Quinze achieves similar results with a video of a red stilt-house - a wooden scaffold that rises up through the central space in computer-generated images. Many architects deconstruct the building: Snøhetta spreads sections of it decorously around the cityscape, while Studio Daniel Libeskind predictably turns the spiral into a cubist tower. Doug Aitken parades an upside-down architectural model through Los Angeles on a set of pretty legs, whereas Doris Salcedo integrates the spiral into a photograph of a New York tenement to make a point about privilege and poverty. There is no end to the irreverent sense of play, with WORKac’s waterslides flowing down the spiralling ramps and Josephine Meckseper’s offshore oil rig in the rotunda’s deep pool. For regional flavour, Geneva’s group8 moulds the void into solid milk chocolate. A major Japanese contingent follows suit with, for example, Kengo Kuma & Associates’ scroll that unfurls around the spiral, Itami Jun Architects’
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blossoming cherry trees surrounded by forest. From all this fantasy also evolve projects of serious intent with future possibilities, like Bruce Munro’s elegant Beacon, a 12-sided tower of illuminated panels in the rotunda that conveys the romance of New York’s skyscrapers at night, or Zaha Hadid Architects’ Z-Wave, a fibreglass structure that merges with the ramp’s balustrade to extend the seating area into an aerial lounge. Another group, including Toshiko Mori and Alyson Shotz, chose to cloak the emptiness in diaphanous veils, whose ethereal quality contrasts with Luzinterruptus’ clothes lines that crisscross the atrium, turning it into an Italian street scene. Finally, recalling Hubert Robert’s evocative 1790s paintings depicting the Louvre’s Grande Galerie in ruins and overgrown with trees, several entries make a similar statement about the inevitability of time. N55 shows tumbled chunks of the spiral beneath trees and hanging vines; Sou Fujimoto Architects imagines tall trees 10,000 years hence piercing the skylight; and Saunders Architecture’s FLW in His Element places the architect in a grove of trees within the spiral.
34 The visitor to the Guggenheim observes the masses of people ascending and descending the spiralling ramps in a kind of ritual rotation, becoming moving sculptures silhouetted against the white walls. Watching the last of the crowd coming down the ramp is like seeing a giant spool of thread unwind. In the end, then, the void itself is the art. Since its opening in 1959, the Frank Lloyd Wright– designed Guggenheim building has served as an inspiration for invention, challenging artists and architects to react to its eccentric, organic design. The central void of the rotunda has elicited many unique responses over the years, which have been manifested in both site specific solo shows and memorable exhibition designs. Submissions were received from all over the world from a wide range of artists, designers, and architects, including emerging as well as established practitioners. Contemplating the Void: Interventions in the Guggenheim Museum at the Guggenheim Museum, New York City, USA, until 28 April.
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The Glass Pavillion
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WHITE ARCHITECTURE in Los-Angeles, CA. By architect STEVE HERMANN. Features five bedrooms, five-and-a-half bathrooms, a kitchen with a wine room and an art gallery.
40 The Glass Pavilion is a redefining structure within modernism. It is a benchmark building that sets the bar as to what modernism is and can be. Throughout the last century there has been a few great buildings that defined modernism and inspired a generation to imagine what is possible not only within architecture but as a society as a whole. Mies Van Der Roh’s Barcelona Pavilion and Farnsworth house, as well as Phillip Johnson’s glass house were these type of defining structures. Now, Steve Hermann’s Glass Pavilion takes the architectural tenants of these greats and catapults these concepts into the new millennium. When he builds in the Hollywood Hills or Beverly Hills, Mr. Hermann says he is usually restricted to a small lot. This lot measures about three-and-a-half acres and gave him the space he needed to create a home featuring walls of glass. Known for his modern designs, Los Angeles-based architect Steve Hermann finished his latest project in Montecito, shown here, about four months ago. Set within a 3.5+/- acre estate of oak groves in Montecito and boasting 14,000+/- sq. ft. under
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“This house is my opus. It’s my greatest achievement of a 20 year career.
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46 roof, this home is impressive beyond words. An almost entirely glass home it allows occupants to be comfortably inside while completely enveloped within nature. You are immediately confronted with a large all glass home, floating above gently rolling lawns. Neutral finished walls, floors and ceilings and minimal furniture expose themselves through the glass curtain walls. The lighting of the home plays a crucial role in the overall ambience as light and shadow are introduced through discrete spotlights distributed along the floors and ceilings. The floors are dressed in cream-toned polished marble floors that compliment the luxurious materials, elegant tones and simplicity of the selective items. Through the use of massive structural steel beams, the home is able to appear weightless as it hovers above an expansive lawn. No expense has been spared during the six years that it took to complete this groundbreaking structure. All of the large glass panels are Star Fire glass, an incredibly clear glass usually reserved for jewelry displays. It s kitchen and baths are by such famous names as Varena, Poliform and Antonio Lupi. In each category the best and most exciting products from around the world
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were sourced to make this home flawless in each category. The home has five bedrooms, five and a half baths, grand hallway and large wine room. The glass pavilion includes an art gallery where the owner currently displays their vintage car collection. The space is so generous that it is capable of holding up to 32 cars within its walnut lined walls. Mr. Hermann, who has a passion for mid-century modern furnishings, also designed some of the home’s furniture, including the benches in the hallway This is a home with possibly no equal. The combination of architectural groundbreaking style and extreme detail in finish quality make it a home without compare. It is the pinnacle of architecture for this generation and will define the era in which it was built. Mr. Hermann says he originally planned to keep the house for himself, but his plans changed while the six-year project was underway. Among those changes, he notes, was the birth of his daughter, now 10 months old. “This house is my opus,” Mr. Hermann says of the home. “It’s my greatest achievement of a 20-year career.”
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Erdem Üngür
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SPACE: The Undefinable Space of Architecture. By ERDEM ÜNGÜR For Scholarly Journal
It’s a possible assumption that today at the most of the architecturalschools the concept of space is built as an anachronistic element. Especially through architectural history lessons and architectural design studios, the concept of space is being established with only traces of certain periods of the history of Western thought disregarding its complex and obscure nature. It’s also thought-provoking that in an educational system, introducing space as one of the integral parts of the discipline, there is a huge ambiguity and recklessness about the history and nature of the concept of space. It can be argued that after the intensive interest of architects to the concept of space between 18901970 and finally after the stabilization of the concept as a key stone of architecture, the discipline has begun to shift out of the spatial studies (excluding ‘place’ theories between 1970-1990). Although space has become the dominant paradigm particularly in social sciences with the spatial turn after 1980s, it seems like that this socio-political transition of the concept of space has not so much affected the architectural theory deep inside its epistemology. Here in it may play arole that in a
50 Cartesian/capitalist direction matured and freezed epistemology of space of the architectural practice, which has to take part directly in the market being used by whether public or private sector asan economic/politic regulatory, is not exactly corresponding to the spatial approaches which were shifted from aesthetic to social, building critical thinking in subjects like social injustice or bio-politics and henceorganizing directly or indirectly resistance against present power andpolitical institutions. In order to trace the way how the concept of space positions itself inside the epistemology of architecture and how this position configurates the discipline, it must be asserted first that space is a historical (1980s) and spatial (Germany) early modern concept diffused into the discipline of architecture rather than being an essential part inherent to it. Therefore the concept of space in architecture has to be read as a historical phenomenon within Western history and in relation with modernity. Space as an amalgam of the physical and the mental. Limiting ourself with the history of Western Thought, we can draw adisciplinary route for space begin-
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ning with philosophy and cosmology, coming over a breakpoint at physics with Newton and diffusing to the varied specialized disciplines after the Enlightenment. One of these disciplines was surely architecture. In the discipline of architecture, the term ‘space’ began to emerge at the end of the 19th century with thevolumetric theories of Semper in Germany, which continued withaesthetic theories, enriched with the early modern thinking and finally opened itself to the English spoken world with Giedion. So, the term ‘space’ entered the vocabulary of architecture. However the term ‘space’ still preserves its janus character. Its German origin Raum has a double meaning as ‘a material enclosure’ (room) and as ‘a philosophical concept’ (space), which obscures the use of term. According to Forty (2000) ‘space’ which did not exist in architectural vocabulary as a term until the 1890s - was developed as an architectural category in Germany by German writers and took its place in the architectural literature within modernism project. Forty begins to investigate the roots of the concept of space by separating two
52 schools of thought emerging from 19th century German Philosophy. One attempts to create a theory of architecture out of philosophy in relation with Hegel rather than out of architectural tradition and centers on Gottfried Semper(1803-1879). The other one emerges in the 1890s concerned with a psychological approach to aesthetics, though it has some links to Kant’s philosophy. Volumetric Theories: space as an enclosure
“The first
In his wholly original theory about the origins of architecture Semper proposed that the first impulse of architecture was the enclosing of space, without reference to the orders and with material components being only secondary to spatial enclosure. The wall as an architectural element makes this enclosed space visible. According to Forty (2000), Hegel’s Aesthetics was also influential on Semper so that he sees the future of architecture laying in space creation. The Hegelian aesthetic system, which formed the 19th century thinking, had two fundamental parts: Beauty in art was achieved with the perfect expression of an Idea andaccording to
impulse of architecture was the enclosing of space.
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this, the hierarchy of the arts was determined with the immateriality of the expression (Van de Ven, 1978). So, architecture wasin the lowest level of the hierarchy because of its materiality and functionality. However Hegel was fascinated by the Gothic religious architecture and for the embodiment of the religious idea in Gothic cathedrals he was briefly pointing the enclosing of space. According to Harry Mallgrave, ‘enclosure’ was being talked about amongst architects as a theme of architecture in Germany in the 1840s-he cites Karl Bötticher’s essay Principles of Hellenic and Germanic Waysof Building (1846)however no one went so far as Semper suggesting spatial enclosure as the fundamental part of architecture (Forty, 2000). Unlike Bötticher’s tectonic preoccupation, Semper imagined architecturalspace as a nexus of social activity. Continuing a tradition dating back to Vitruvius, Semper considered the built enclosure and the separation of interior from exterior space to be the essential aspect of architecture (Schwarzer, 1991). In the first decade of the 20th century Semper was surely the source for those German-speaking proto-modern
54 architects who first articulated ‘space’ as the subject of architecture. Adolf Loos in 1898, H.P.Berlage in 1905, Peter Behrens in 1910 have had declarations and publications presenting enclosed space as the ultimate essence and purpose of architecture (Forty, 2000).Hight, Hensel and Menges (2009) are also stating that the first architectural discourse about space was Semper’s volumetric theory defining the main task of architecture as ‘enclosing space’. The double meaning of the German word Raum as space and also as the room, which is a physical closed space, makes this approach more understandable. The emphasis on ‘room’ is important in the late 19th century residential and urban spaces and it will rise again in the 20th century architecture. Spatial turn and the immunity of architecture This multidisciplinary critical domain against modern space was substantially established with the epistemological turn from the historybased analysis of 19th century to the spatial one, with the rise of structuralism (West-Pavlov, 2009). According to Soja (2000) one of the most important intellectual developments
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of the late 20th century is that scholars have begun to interpret space and the spatiality of human life with the same critical insight and interpretive power that has traditionally been given to time and history on the one hand, and to social relations and society on the other. Soja argues that the spatial turn has involved the end of historicism, which privileged time over space, and there assertion of space into social theory (Warf and Arias, 2009). Similarly, Fredric Jameson claimed that the dominant cultural mode is one defined by categories of space; we inhabit the synchronic, he claims, rather than the diachronic (West-Pavlov, 2009). It can be speculated that architecture is unable (or straining) to import the spatial turn of the social sciences to its spatial epistemology because of the ambiguous character of it (which was tried out to summarize along the paper) and because of the efficient role it takes places in the production of abstract space. Albeit not giving any clue about how this change might happen in architecture, Lefebvre diagnoses the awry looking of architects: 1.Space given to the architect is not the neutral, transparentstuff of Euclidean geometry. It has al-
58 ready been produced by capitalism. 2.Architects don’t create in a condition of ‘pure freedom’. Their eyes are constituted through the space in which they live. 3.The apparatus employed by architects (such as drawing techniques) are not neutral mediators, but are themselves part of the discourse of power. Moreover, the practice of drawing isitself one of the prime means through which social space is turned into an abstraction, homogenized for the purposes of exchange and drained of lived experience. 4. The techniques of drawing, indeed the whole practice of architecture, privilege the eye above all other senses andsustain the tendency for image, and spectacle, to take the place of reality. 5.Architecture and particularly modernism are partly responsible for making space appear homogeneous (Lefebvre,1991; Forty, 2000). Lefebvre’s criticisms to the ‘space of architects’ are
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60 in fact the critique of abstract space. It is the form into which social space has been rendered with the separation of mental space from lived space by capitalism. So, human subjects are not just alienated, as Marx saw it, from the result of their labour, but from the entire experience of everyday life. They don’t experience space by living it, but via representations provided through intellectual disciplines and other ideological practices of capitalism. According to Lefebvre, architects and urban planners too often imitate or caricature the discourse of power with their abstract empty space, rather then liberating the discipline of architecture (Forty, 2000). According to Hight, Hensel and Menges (2009) the problem in Lefebvre’s argument is that he is telling almost nothing about how to transmit the spatial multiplicity he puts forward actively into design practices. Besides, continuing with Lefebvre’s criticisms (to the spatial concepts of modernist architects and to the architects as authorities of space) social geographers became experts of space. However the spatial discourse of social geography can not be translated into architecture unproblematically. The
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consistent attack on architecture whether frustrates the integration of these statements into alternative designapproaches or they remain too broad for being used in design disciplines. Furthermore; Hight, Hensel and Menges (2009) state that the academic dominance of social geographers can be interpreted as a reduction of space into an inconsistent, representative and mostly semiotic repertoire of acrobatics which repeats itself. According to them, Lefebvredoes not suggest anything new rather than abstract space and hinders new spatial approaches in architectural design by leaving architects outside of the production area of spatial knowledge: ‘Thus, while Lefebvre’s argument remains a milestone in offering acritical analysis of space as heterogeneous sets of relationships, it has become a millstone for any architect seeking innovation through heterogeneous space.’ Conclusion and discussion The modern concept of space, introduced by art historians and aestheticians into the epistemology of
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architecture in the 1890s, has undergone a transdisciplinary transition process until the 1960s and became the prevailing space apprehension in architecture. The main character of this abstract space was the separation of the physical from the mental. As a result, architecture became an apparatus of capitalism as the producer of abstract space. Complex and interrelated approaches against modern space , like neo-avant-garde Postmodernism, ‘place’ theories and ‘new space’ theories were developed in time. Albeit involving some change in the spatial epistemology of architecture, it can not be asserted that these approaches gave birth to a permanent transformation. Today, architecture still assumes a world defined by Descartes and Newton and struggle mostly with the spatial problems (without anyconcrete social dimension) introduced at the beginning of the 20th century. Therefore it can be argued that the transdisciplinary historical transformation of the concept of space is repressed as an ambiguous and undefinable subject in the architectural epistemology. This passive and conservative behaviour of architecture may be
64 explained with the immunity of its epistemology to the socio-political transition of the concept of space particularly in social sciences after1980s and this phenomenon can be possibly explained by the awrylooking of architects described by Lefebvre. Therefore, Forty (2000) recommends to follow the path beginning with Schmarsow, passing to Heidegger and continuing with Lefebvre. However one has to keep inmind that there are lots of different approaches to this issue. For example Dovey (2010) suggests to replace the Heideggerian ontology with a more Deleuzian notion and to replace the division of subject/object orsociality/spatiality with Bourdieu’s concept of the habitus as an embodied world. Hight, Hensel and Menges (2009), on the other hand, claim that Lefebvre’s attempt to go beyond the gap between lived space and space as an abstract concept, was too complicated. They assert that space has never been such an abstract and modern concept, and follow Bruno Latour instead of Lefebvre. As it can be seen from a few examples, it is not so easy to define the broad space of architecture. Although the relationship between
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the ‘space of architecture’ and the abstract space, or the integration of the recent spatial theories of social sciences into the discipline of architecture are intrinsic to the concept of space in architecture, these kind of historical and theoritical approaches to space are mostly missing in architectural design studios and architectural history lessons. Therefore, the concept of space, which is for sure complex and comprehensive because of its transdisciplinary character, has to be re-examined critically in the architectural epistemology. In an educational system introducing space asone of the integral parts of the discipline, the huge ambiguity andrecklessness about the history and nature of the concept of space should be avoided as far as possible. This paper was based on the master thesis in architectural design programme of ITU, with the title of ‘The relationship of architecture & space through interdisciplinary historical transformation of the concept of space’ , written by Erdem Üngür under Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nurbin Paker’s supervision in 2011.
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Mind Space
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A photo story exploring the possibilities of the color white as a symbolic and psychological entity. White is not only space, but a deeper meaning that should be explored.
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“White” as Symbolism
WHITE is an achromatic color, literally a “COLOR WITHOUT COLOR”, composed of a mixture frequencies of the light of the visible spectrum.
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It is one of the most common colors in nature, The color of sunlight, snow, milk, chalk, limestoneand other common minerals. In many cultures white represents or signifies purity, innocence, and light, and is the symbolic opposite of black, or darkness. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, white is the color most often associated with perfection, the good, honesty, cleanliness, the beginning, the new, neutrality, and exactitude. In ancient Egypt and ancient Rome, priestesses wore white as a symbol of purity, and Romans wore a white toga as a symbol of citizenship. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance a white unicorn symbolized chastity, and a white lamb sacrifice and purity; the widows of kings dressed in white rather than black as the color of mourning. It sometimes symbolizes royalty; it was the color of the French kings (black being the colour of the queens) and of the monarchist movement after the French Revolution as well as of the movement called the White Russians (not be confounded with Belarus, literally “White Russia”) who fought the Bolsheviks during the Russian Civil War (1917-1922). Greek and Roman temples were faced with white marble, and
beginning in the 18th century, with the advent of neoclassical architecture, white became the most common color of new churches, capitols and other government buildings, especially in the United States of America. It was also widely used in 20th century modern architecture as a symbol of modernity, simplicity and strength. White is an important color for almost all world religions. The Pope, the head of the Roman Catholic Church, has worn white since 1566, as a symbol of purity and sacrifice. In Islam, and in the Shinto religion of Japan, it is worn by pilgrims; and by the Brahmins in India, In Western cultures and in Japan, white is the most common color for wedding dresses, symbolizing purity and virginity. In many Asian cultures, white is also the colour of mourning. The white color on television screens and computer monitors is created with the RGB color model by mixing red, green and blue light at equal intensities. In nature, snow and clouds appear white because they are composed of water droplets or
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In nature, snow and clouds appear white because they are composed of water droplets or ice crystals mixed with air; when white sunlight enters snow, very little of the spectrum is absorbed; almost all of the light is reflected or scattered by the air and water molecules, so the snow appears to be the color of sunlight, white.Beaches with sand containing high amounts of quartz or eroded limestone also appear white, since quartz and limestone reflect or scatter sunlight, rather than absorbing it. Tropical white sand beaches may also have a high quantity of white calcium carbonate from tiny bits of seashells ground to fine sand by the action of the waves. The word white continues Old English, ultimately from a Common Germanic also reflected in OHG. The root is ultimately from Proto-Indo-European language, surviving also in Sanskrit śveta “to be white or bright” and Slavonic “light”. The Icelandic word for white, is directly derived from the Old Norse form of the word. Common Germanic also had the word *blankaz (“white, bright, blinding”), borrowed into Late Latin as *blancus, which provided the source for Romance words for “white”
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(Catalan, Occitan and French blanc, Spanish blanco, Italian bianco, Galician-Portuguese branco, etc.). The antonym of white is black. Some non-European languages have a wide variety of terms for white. The Inuit language has seven different words for seven different nuances of white. Sanskrithas specific words for bright white, the white of teeth, the white of sandalwood, the white of the autumn moon, the white of silver, the white of cow’s milk, the white of pearls, the white of a ray of sunlight, and the white of stars. Japanese has six different words, depending upon brilliance or dullness, or if the color is inert or dynamic. OPTICS AND WHITE LIGHT White is the color the human visual system senses when the incoming light to the eye stimulates all three types of color sensitive cone cells in the eye in nearly equal amounts. Materials that do not emit light themselves appear white if their surfaces reflect back most of the light that strikes them in a diffuse way.
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In 1666, Isaac Newton demonstrated that white light could be broken up into its composite colors by passing it through a prism, then using a second prism to reassemble them. Before Newton, most scientists believed that white was the fundamental color of light. White light can be generated by the sun, by stars, or by earthbound sources such as fluorescent lamps, white LEDs and incandescent bulbs. On the screen of a color television or computer, white is produced by mixing the primary colors of light: red, green and blue (RGB) at full intensity, a process called additive mixing(see image below). White light can be fabricated using light with only two wavelengths, for instance by mixing light from a red and cyan laser or yellow and blue lasers. This light will however have very few practical applications since color rendering of objects will be greatly distorted. The fact that light sources with vastly different spectral power distributions can result in a similar sensory experience is due to the way the light is processed by the visual system. One color that arise from two different spectral power distributions is called a metamerism.
The International Commission on Illumination defines white (adapted) as “a color stimulus that an observer who is adapted to the viewing environment would judge to be perfectly achromatic and to have a luminance factor of unity. The color stimulus that is considered to be the adapted white may be different at different locations within a scene. The adaptation mentioned in the CIE definition above is the chromatic adaptation by which the same colored object in a scene experienced under very different illuminations will be perceived as having nearly the same color. The same principle is used in photography and cinematography where the choice of white pointdetermines a transformation of all other color stimuli. Changes in or manipulation of the white point can be used to explain some optical illusions such as The dress. Many of the light sources that emit white light emit light at almost all visible wavelengths (sun light, incandescent lamps of various Color temperatures). This has led to the notion that white light can be defined as a mixture of “all colors” or “all visible wavelengths”. This misconception is widespread and might originally stem from the fact that New-
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defined as a mixture of “all colors” or “all visible wavelengths”. This misconception is widespread and might originally stem from the fact that Newton discovered that sunlight is composed of light with wavelengths across the visible spectrum. Concluding that since “all colors” produce white light then white must be made up of “all colors” is a common logical error called affirming the consequent, which might be the cause of the misunderstanding. ASTRONOMY A white dwarf is a stellar remnant composed mostly of electron-degenerate matter. They are very dense; a white dwarf’s mass is comparable to that of the Sun and its volume is comparable to that of the Earth. Its faint luminosity comes from the emission of stored thermal energy. A white dwarf is very hot when it is formed, but since it has no source of energy, it will gradually radiate away its energy and cool down. This means that its radiation, which initially has a high color temperature, will lessen and redden with time. Over a very long time, a white dwarf will cool to tempera-
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tures at which it will no longer emit significant heat or light, and it will become a cold black dwarf. However, since no white dwarf can be older than the age of the Universe(approximately 13.8 billion years), even the oldest white dwarfs still radiate at temperatures of a few thousand kelvins, and no black dwarfs are thought to exist yet. INNOCENCE AND SACRIFICE In Western culture, white is the color most often associated with innocence. In Biblical times, lambs and other white animals were sacrificed to expiate sins. In Christianity Christ is considered the “lamb of God,” who died for the sins of mankind. The white lily is considered the flower of purity and innocence, and is often associated with the Virgin Mary. THE BEGINNING AND THE NEW White is the color in Western culture most often associated with beginnings and the new. In the Bible, light was created immediately after the heavens and the earth. In Christianity, children are baptized wearing white, and, wear white for their first com-
munion. Christ after his Resurrection is traditionally portrayed dressed in white. Eggs, another symbol of the new, are used to celebrate Easter. The Queen of the United Kingdom traditionally wears white when she opens the session of Parliament. In high society, debutantes traditionally wear white for their first ball. A new project is often described as beginning with a “blank page.” WEDDINGS White has long been the traditional color worn by brides at royal weddings, but the white wedding gown for ordinary people appeared in the 19th century. Before that time, most brides wore their best Sunday clothing, of whatever color. The white lace wedding gown of Queen Victoria in 1840 had a large impact on the color and fashion of wedding dresses in both Europe and America down to the present day. CLEANLINESS White is the color most associated with cleanliness. Objects which are expected to be clean, such as
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refrigerators and dishes, toilets and sinks, bed linen and towels, are traditionally white. White was the traditional color of the coats of doctors, nurses, scientists and laboratory technicians, though nowadays a pale blue or green is often used. White is also the color most often worn by chefs, bakers, and butchers, and the color of the aprons of waiters in French restaurants. GHOSTS, PHANTOMS AND THE FOUR HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE White is the color associated with ghosts and phantoms. In the past the dead were traditionally buried in a white shroud. Ghosts are said to be the spirits of the dead who, for various reasons, are unable to rest or enter heaven, and so walk the earth in their white shrouds. White is also connected with the paleness of death. A common expression in English is “pale as a ghost.” The woman in white, Weiße Frau, or dame blanche is a familiar figure in English, German and French ghost stories. She is a spectral apparition of a female clad in white, in most cases the ghost of
an ancestor, sometimes giving warning about death and disaster. The most notable Weiße Frau is the legendary ghost of the German Hohenzollern dynasty. Seeing a white horse in a dream is said to be presentiment of death. In the Book of Revelation, the last book in the New Testament of the Bible, the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse are supposed to announce the Apocalypse before the Last Judgement. The man on a white horse with a bow and arrow. according to different interpretations, represents either War and Conquest, the Antichrist, or Christ himself, cleansing the world of sin. Death rides a horse whose color is described in ancient Greek as khlōros (χλωρός) in the original Koine Greek, which can mean either green/greenish-yellow or pale/pallid. BLACK AND WHITE Black and white often represent the contrast between light and darkness, day and night, good and evil. In taoism, the two opposite natures of the universe, yin and yang, are often symbolized in black and white, Ancient games of strategy, such as go and chess, use black and white to represent the two sides.
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In the French monarchy white symbolized the King and his power par la grâce de Dieu (“by the grace of God”) and in contrast black was the colour of the queen who according to the Salic Law which excluded women from the throne (and thus from power) could never become the ruling monarch. Black and white also often represent formality and seriousness, as in the costumes of judges and priests, business suits, of formal evening dress. Monks of the Dominican Order wear a black cloak over a white habit. Until 1972 agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation were required to wear white shirts with their suits. WHITE IN OTHER CULTURES In China, Korea, and some other Asian countries, white, or more precisely, the whitish color of undyed linen, is the color of mourning and funerals. In traditional China, undyed linen clothing is worn at funerals. As time passes, the bereaved can gradually wear clothing dyed with colors, then with darker colors. Small sacks of quicklime, one for each year
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ally wear clothing dyed with colors, then with darker colors. Small sacks of quicklime, one for each year of the life of the deceased are placed around the body to protect it against impurity in the next world, and white paper flowers are placed around the body. In China and other Asian counties, white is the color of reincarnation, showing that death is not a permanent separation from the world. In China, white is associated with the masculine (the yang of the yin and yang); with the unicorn and tiger; with the fur of an animal; with the direction of west; with the element metal; and with the autumn season. In Japan, undyed linen white robes are worn by pilgrims for rituals of purification, and bathing in sacred rivers. In the mountains, pilgrims wear costumes of undyed jute to symbolize purity. A white kimono is often placed in the casket with the deceased for the journey to the other world, as white represents death sometimes. Condolence gifts, or kooden, are tied with black and white ribbons and wrapped in white paper, protecting the contents from the impurities of the other world.
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A CONVERSATION with Psychology professor MUGE EROL at The New School in New York, NY.
Is My White Your White?
Erol/Mind Space /97 Through a conversation with Muge Erol, we discussed the possibilities of the perception of the color white. Erol has a Master of the Arts in Psychophysics, Experimental Psychology, Cognitive Psychology. Currently she is situated at The New School, in New York, New York. The conversation started during a color perception class at The New School, where she taught perspective psychology students the fundamentals in visual perception. Visual perception is based around the ability to interpret surroundings contained in visual light. An idea arose from these discoveries in the visual field, which is precisely this: “Is my white your white?” and how do we percieve the color white? Erol: “While this is not the most traditional way of asking this famous question, one thing we can all agree upon is that we won’t ever be able to answer this question directly; that is, whether your perception of a certain color is different than mine. But does the color without color escape the limits of our perception? I believe not.
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Let me give you the example of the Kanizsa triangle (See Figure). The illusion stems from the configuration of this famous figure: the spatial distribution of its parts evokes the perception of a bright white triangle instead of the negative space of a triangle, and we see an illusory triangle where none exists. The light reflection pattern casted on the retina is exactly the same for the triangle and the background, which means that the stimulation at the photoreceptor level is identical, however our experience of the whiteness of the triangle compared to the whiteness of the background is appreciably different. Is there such thing as whiter than white? While we know that there is no color or luminance difference between the illusory triangle and the background, our visual system introduces illusory contours to the image and our impression of the Kanizsa triangle is that it is whiter than the white background. So, there is whiter than white; perhaps not at a purely physical level, but most certainly so at the perceptual level.�
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NEGATIVE SPACE as discussed through visual arts and design, and the void of information in a space.
Negative Space
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Negative space, in art, is the space around and between the subject(s) of an Negative space may be most evident when the space around a subject, not the subject itself, forms an interesting or artistically relevant shape, and such space occasionally is used to artistic effect as the “real” subject of an image The use of negative space is a key element of artistic composition. The Japanese word “ma” is sometimes used for this concept, for example in garden design. In a two-tone, black-and-white image, a subject is normally depicted in black and the space around it is left blank (white), thereby forming a silhouette of the subject. Reversing the tones so that the space around the subject is printed black and the subject itself is left blank, however, causes the negative space to be apparent as it forms shapes around the subject. This is called figure-ground reversal. In graphic design of printed or displayed materials, where effective communication is the objective, the use of negative space may be crucial. Not only within the typography, but in its placement in relation
Negative/Mind Space /105 to the whole. It is the basis of why upper and lower case typography always is more legible than the use of all capital letters. Negative space varies around lower case letters, allowing the human eye to distinguish each word rapidly as one distinctive item, rather than having to parse out what the words are in a string of letters that all present the same overall profile as in all caps. The same judicious use of negative space drives the effectiveness of the entire design. Because of the long history of the use of black ink on white paper, “white space” is the term often used in graphics to identify the same separation. Elements of an image that distract from the intended subject, or in the case of photography, objects in the same focal plane, are not considered negative space. Negative space may be used to depict a subject in a chosen medium by showing everything around the subject, but not the subject itself. Use of negative space will produce a silhouette of the subject. Most often, negative space is used as a neutral or contrasting background to draw attention to the main subject, which then is referred to as the
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positive space. The use of equal negative space, as a balance to positive space, in a composition is considered by many as good design. This basic, but often overlooked principle of design, gives the eye a “place to rest,” increasing the appeal of a composition through subtle means. The term also is used in other arts. Musicians will describe periods of silence within a musical piece as negative space. However, In writing, a space ( ) is a blank area devoid of content, serving to separate words, letters, numbers, and punctuation. Conventions for interword and intersentence spaces vary among languages, and in some cases the spacing rules are quite complex. In the classical period, Latin was written with interpuncts (centred dots) as word separators, but that practice was abandoned sometime around 200 CE in favour of scriptio continua, i.e., with the words running together without any word separators. In around 600–800 CE, blank spaces started being inserted between words in Latin, and that practice carried over to all languages using the Latin alphabet (including English and most other Western European languages).
Negative/Mind Space /107 In typesetting, spaces have historically been of multiple lengths with particular space-lengths being used for specific typographic purposes, such as separating words or separating sentences or separating punctuation from words. Following the invention of the typewriter and the subsequent overlap of designer style-preferences and computer-technology limitations, much of this reader-centric variation was lost in normal use. In computer representation of text, spaces of various sizes, styles, or language characteristics (different space characters) are indicated with unique code points. Whitespace characters include the various types of spaces, tabs, line breaks, paragraph breaks, page breaks, and related characters. These are used in digital typesetting, inputting commands, programming, and markup languages. Positive and negative space play an important role in determining the overall composition in a work of art, helping display hidden imagry within. You can creatively leverage negative space to encourage viewers to find hidden images within the space of creative imagery.
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“INSIGHTS FROM KYOTO, JAPAN: THE POTENTIAL OF NOTHING” From KJ 8, By GUNTER NITSCHKE
Japanese Ma 間
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Place is the product of lived space and lived time, a reflection of our states of mind and heart. In the original Chinese, the above poem ends with the character 間, which in Japanese is pronounced chiefly as ma. Originally, this character consisted of the pictorial sign for “moon” (月) — not the present-day “sun” ( 日) — under the sign for “gate” (門). For a Chinese or Japanese using language consciously, this ideogram, depicting a delicate moment of moonlight streaming through a chink in the entranceway, fully expresses the two simultaneous components of a sense of place: the objective, given aspect and the subjective, felt aspect. The translation of ma as “place” is my own. The dictionaries say “space,” but historically the notion of place precedes our contemporary idea of space as a measurable area. Architectural theorists accept this: “In our understanding of nature we recognize the origin of the concept of space as a system of places.” My translation was selected in part to get away from the rendering of ma as “imag-
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inary space” by Itoh Teiji. This deals only with the subjective aspect, without doing justice to the full spectrum of use and meaning which this venerable character represents. It must be stressed that a ‘sense of place’ does not negate an objective awareness of the static or homogenous quality of topological space. Rather, it infuses the objective space with an additional subjective awareness of lived, existential, non-homogenous space. It also incorporates a recognition of the activities which ‘take place’ in a particular space, and different meanings a place might have for various individuals or cultures. From the hundreds of uses of the character ma in traditional and modern Japanese, I have selected a few which I present here in order of increasing complexity of meaning. Here ma denotes a line in space, a measure of length or distance. From ancient times Japanese architecture was based on wooden post-and-beam construction. The distance between the centerlines
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of successive posts — the hashira-ma (橋ラマ) — evolved into the basic structural unit of the traditional Japanese wooden house. To signify this carpentry measure, the character is pronounced ken. Standing alone and pronounced as aida, 間 denotes not only a straight-line distance between two points in space, but also a simultaneous awareness of both poles as individual units. Thus even in a simple one-dimensional use, the character ma exhibits its peculiar ambivalence, signifying both “distance” or “interstice” and “relatedness” or “polarity.” 六畳の間 (roku jo no ma) Six-tatami room (literally: six tatami area) Ma combined with a number of tatami mats denotes area. For a Japanese, however, a reference to a room of a certain number of floor mats would also instantly call to mind a particular usage, interior makeup, decoration and height. 空間 (ku-kan) Space (literally: empty place) The first character in this word originally stood for a “hold in the ground,” and later took on its present
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meaning of a “hole in the universe” or “the sky.” Ono Susumu suggests that the ancient Japanese divided space vertically into two parts. One was sora(空, sky), which was understood as absence of content, emptiness. The other was ame or ama (天, heaven), which was the opposite of kuni (国, region, realm, government) and thus meant an earthly area of habitation and rule. Today ku is used for “empty” in the simple physical sense, and for “void” in Buddhist metaphysics. The compound ku-kan and for “void” in Buddhist metaphysics. The compound ku-kun is of recent origin. It was coined to express the concept of three-dimensional objective space which was imported from the West, for which the Japanese language had no word of its very own. The structure of Japanese dictates a linguistic description of space different from that of European languages, as illustrated in the following combinations of ma with other characters. 土間 (do-ma) Work space (literally: earth place), especially in farmhouses with stamped-earth floors.
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間引く (ma-biku) To thin out (literally: to draw or pull space), making room for plants to grow. 貸間 (kashi-ma) Room to let. The toko-no-ma is at once a spatial and an aesthetic concept, and furthermore ahs an important social connotation in Japanese life. Classically it constitutes the unifying focus between host and guest, through an act of creation on the part of the host and an act of appreciation on the part of the guest. 虎の間 (tora-no-ma) The Tiger Room (literally, place of tigers) is the name of a room in the abbot’s quarters at Nanzenji in Kyoto. The dominant decorative motif on the sliding doors becomes the qualifier of the entire space, a common custom in mansions, castles, temples and present-day hotel ballrooms. The naming of places, manmade or natural, is a universal means of giving meaning and identity to a lived or existential space. 鏡の間 (kagami-no-ma) Dressing room (literally: mirror room) separated from the noh stage by a curtain. This is the place reserved for the magical
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transformation of the actor, via the donning of the spiritually-charged noh mask, and the meditation or inner-reflection involved in facing the full-length mirror. 瞬間 (shun-kan) A moment (literally: a blink or twinkle of time) 間に合う (ma-ni-au) To be in time for (literally: to meet the time) 間もなく (ma mo naku) Soon (literally: in no time) Most cultures measure and express time in terms of intervals in space (or at leas they did so before digital clocks replaced sundials and watchdials). It is not surprising then, that the same Japanese character, pronounced variously as ma or aida or kan, can be used to denote either temporal or spatial extension. Some examples: 相間 (ai-no-ma) Literally: reciprocating place 1. A room in between 2. Interval, leisure
“All expe-
rience of space is a time structured process.
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間近い (ma-jikai) Literally: a close space 1. Close at hand (spatially) 2. Drawing near (temporally) 間者 (kan-ja) Spy (literally: ma person); one who works in between known spaces or known hours The dual relation of ma to space and time is not simply semantic. It reflects the fact that all experience of space is a time-structured process, and all experience of time is a space-structured process. When we look at a traditional Japanese scroll picture or emaki-mono, time is concretely present as our eyes follow a sequence of spatial events interrupted by writing. Our hands actually unroll the scroll, that is, “move the space” as time passes. Nothing could be more detrimental to the intended narrative process of viewing than a full simultaneous display of the scroll as a whole. In traditional Japanese paintings of palaces and gardens shown in the fukinuke-yatai or “blown-away rooftop” technique, time becomes part of our spatial experience as our eyes have to move from scene to scene in various adjacent spaces.
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In traditional tourist manuals of famous scenic routes, which were sold as small books and could be unfolded into continuous strip pictures often more than 20 feet in length, an additional technique was used to represent space as a time-structured process. The spatial sights would be drawn above and below the continuous central road, shown as they would unfold themselves concretely over time to the actual traveller. Thus we end up with a “plan” of the route quite different from our modern orthographic maps. In a Tokaido manual of the mid-nineteenth century, for instance, Mt. Fuji is represented about 50 times in various settings along the route. We can find a similar presentation and understanding of space as a time and mood structured process in the layout of traditional Japanese stroll gardens and, on a smaller scale, a traditional Japanese stroll gardens and, on a smaller scale, in the placement of tobi-ishi, (“skipping stones”) used to make garden paths. By a sophisticated placing of the stones, our foot movements can be slowed down, sped up, halted or turned in various directions. And with our legs,
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our eyes are manipulated, and our visual input from spatial phenomena is structured over time. 間が悪い (ma ga warui) I am uncomfortable, embarrassed (literally: the placing is bad) Here a time/space metaphor is used to express a very personal, subjective notion. The phrase is used in everyday situations as well as in the arts. It means that a place or situation is uncomfortable, because of either the atmosphere (environmental or social) or one’s own mood, with the result that one becomes self-conscious or embarrassed. A contemporary rendering might be, “the vibes are bad.” This shows us another side of the ma concept — the notion that animation is an essential feature of place. The animation may be something which is projected from one’s subjective feelings; but it also may be some external, objective quality, the genius loci or the spirit, which projects itself into our minds. Rene Dubos has alluded to this duality: “I remember the mood of places better than their precise features because places evoke for me life situations
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rather than geographical sites. The uses of ma point up the fact that the identity of a place is as much in the mind of the beholder as in its physical characteristics. Noh is the supreme expression of the art of ma, combining all the aspects that have so far been elaborated here into one great symphony. It epitomizes the traditional Japanese artistic preoccupation with dynamic balance between object and space, action and inaction, sound and silence, movement and rest. 間取り (ma-dori) Design (literally: grasp of place. The Japanese architect traditional worked to “create a sense of place” (ma-dori o tsukuru). Implicit in this term, according to architect Seike Kyoshi[11], was the design not only of structural elements in space, but also of the variable arrangements for temporary uses which are so characteristic of the Japanese dwelling. By adding and removing sliding doors, windows, portable screens and other household utensils, the Japanese home is adapted to changing
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seasons, uses and social needs. Nowadays, unfortunately, the termma-dori, so charged with connotations of place, has been replaced with an “exotic” imported term: dizain (design). 間抜け (ma-nuke) Simpleton, fool (literally: someone missing ma) 間違う (ma-chigau) To be mistaken (literally: place differs) 絶え間 (taema) Pause, gap (literally: discontinuous place) With the discussion of the void we have left the scope of phenomenology, architectural or otherwise. The “void” in the Buddhist sense is not a concept arrived at by rational thought, but an expression of an incommunicable individual experience, accessible only to a person practicing meditation. A blank surface of sand in front of a Buddhist temple or an empty sheet of white paper in Zen painting is not enough to trigger this insight. Only a poet can put this paradox into words:
“I dived down into the depth of the ocean of forms, hoping to gain the perfect pearl of the formless.”
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MASTHEAD/
Editor
/Katie DeAngelis
Contributing Editors
/PSAM 2000
Printing Press
/MagCloud
Software Production
/Adobe Creative Suite
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COLOPHON/
Introduction
/ “Definition of White” Wikipedia “White” Merriam-Webster
Physical Space (photo story)
/ Image 1,2 Tumblr.com, Image 3 WeHeartIt, Image 4
Contemplating the Void: Interventions of the Guggenheim Museum
/ Exhibition at the Guggenheim Museum in New York, NY. All photography from www.guggenheim.com
The Glass Pavillion by Steve Hermann
/ Article from HomeAdore. All photography and specs from www.stevehermann.com
Space: The Undefinable Space of Architecture By Erdem Üngür
/ Article by Erdem Üngür. from www.academia.edu Images from Tumblr.com
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Mind Space (photo story)
/ Image 1,2 Tumblr.com, Image 3 WeHeartIt, Image 4
Symbolism of the Color White
/ Article sourced from Wikipedia. Photo sourced from Tumblr.com
“Is My White Your White?” Conversation with Muge Erol
/ Imagry is “Kanizsa’s Triangle” Information on visual perception from Muge Erol. Text from Muge Erol.
Negative Space
/ Article from Wikipedia with edits from DesignFestival.
Insights from Kyoto, Japan: The Potential of Nothing By Gunter Nitschke
/ Article by Gunter Nitschke. Sourced from KyotoJournal Online. Photos from Kyoto.
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